Mission-Ready: Physical Fitness, Operational Demands & the Military Pentathlon

Workshop | Military Pentathlon Jørstadmoen 2025

Sjur Fortun Øfsteng | PhD

Norwegian Defence Cyber Academy

sofsteng@mil.no

September 24, 2025

Meeting your military work demands

Todays topics for discussion

What are your working demands in your position?

How will you achieve these working demands?

Why is this of importance?

Brief introduction to the workshop

The complex soldier

Physical Performance Continuum

(Figure modified from: Billing and Drain 2017; Drain and Reilly 2019)

First let us take a brief recap of what I talked about last lecture about working demands, physical fitness and military readiness.

From this figure it summarizes a your yourney as a soldiers related to physical employment standards. With that i mean, you need to reach a baseline standard of physical fitness that increases your performance level in either physical or occupational task performance. This is a level you pursue during your academy training.
The next progression step, is to get you as soldier deployment ready / mission ready… Here you will additionally focus your training more on your occupational demands that you will meet when you deploy… called pre-deployment preparation…
Then when you are assumed deployment ready your performance level is high and your have optimized your military readiness..

4- Then during your deployment you will experience these drop in performance level, due to the stress factors we talked about last lecture… show next slide and explain..

then to re-establish performance you return to the preparation phase and so you move along your carrer.

You are able to meet the occupational demands, which demands a level of physical fitness. This is of importance to prevent MSI..
- Focus on developing occupationlly-relevant physical capacitites to improve occupational performance, and reduce MSKI risk, rather than focus on task performance (e.g. load carriage).
Consider implementing physical employment standard as maximal performance tests, rather than dichotomous pass/fail tests, to better understand the relationship between occupationally-relevant physical capacity and MSKI risk.
Development of coherent, well characterized physical training continuum, inclusive of both physical training and psychological is critical to the optimal development and maintenance of workforce performance capacity.
Physical training, PES and MSKI prevention strategies are co-dependent factors, and central to organisational capability within physically demanding occupations.

Changes following field exercises and operations/deployment

Figure created with data from Ojanen 2022
Doctoral Thesis

The complex soldier

Physical Performance Continuum

(Figure modified from: Billing and Drain 2017; Drain and Reilly 2019)

The complex soldier

There are many stress factors for the modern soldier
Factors affecting soldiers training adaptations and
performance development

..THROUGH education, as participating here, you will more and more experience how these stress factors affects your changes in body composition and performance level. AND, you may, hopefully by this increased knowledge and skills develop your own strategies suited for you body to optimizing your development in military performance and hence operational readiness..

“click” and hence more likely manage to sustain physical fitness over time, to reduce/ or deley the the drop in fitness during more intense periods/operations and thereby optimizing your operational readiness…

Anyway, these physiological changes will also affect your possibility to develop your military performance, it causes an interference - due to body are not in a homeostatic balance and may not be susceptible for training adaptations
All the stressors, point, have negative effects on soldiers performance in the battlefield. As a consequence of all these stressors, it is essential for soldiers to have adequate physical and psychological status to manage all the occupational tasks they have to perform.
You need a plan to acconunt for these factors, and you cannot train on all capacitites and military task simuntainously, that may lead to negative development, overreaching and increased risk of getting injured… It has to be a balance between load and restitution…
The modern battlefield sets high demands and challenges to soldiers’ physical and psycological domains. Even though the development of technology har relieved some of the physical and psychological burden on the battlefield, the overall load placed on soldiers has increased and the time for recovery has decreased.

CONCLUSION her or at the end…:

Need for high physical, psycological and cognitive readiness to be successful in their everyday occupational tasks
Soldiers need to be in good physical and psycological shape to make decisions quickly and responsible, even when they are in sleep deprivation, energy deficit of physically fatigued. Good physical performance is connected to resilience, as well as psychological and cognitive performance
Studies have shown that good physical performance is connected to resilience, as well as psychological and cognitive performance.
So, when designing physical training programs for soldiers, it is important to find an optimal balance between physical training and military specific training to avoid overreaching and training interference.
A sufficient physical performance level helps the soldier to recover faster and to be more prepared for different tasks.
ALL THIS SHOULD be carefully considered when trying to plan and implement optimal physical training programs for soldiers.

Icebreaker 😎 (15 min)

First task of reflection: Physical skills and mission ready

- If you had to lead a mission tomorrow, what physical skills/capacities would you most rely on?

Military working demands continues

If you think about your own field of expertise, which work-related demand do you consider the most important or most influential, and why?
- What makes it stand out compared to other demands?
- Which factors are shaping this working demand (technology, environment, speciality, region, country specific etc.)?

What Makes a Combat-Ready Soldier? (20 mins)

Common combat roles and physical tasks (e.g. carrying gear, movement under fire, tactical obstacles)

Discussion;

“How does your (the cadet) daily physical training reflect these demands?”

If not in particular: How can you implement some of these working demand in your training day?

Coping with the demands

What strategies help you handle this demand effectively?
Can this demand also be seen as an opportunity for your development as a soldier?

What Makes a Combat-Ready Soldier? (20 mins)

To prepare for the demands of military duty and military pentathlon, we need to train smart – not just a lot and hard

Five core training principles can guide this process:

1. Load and adaptation – how the body responds to stress
2. Variation – to prevent stagnation and overload
3. Progression – to ensure continuous improvement
4. Specificity – to match training with performance demands
5. Monitoring and control – to adjust and individualize the plan

What Makes a Combat-Ready Soldier? (15 mins)

We have assesments - what are the tests telling us?

We have assessment to measure your physical fitness, annual test scores.
Its an pass / fail assesment according to a test score /threshold…
If you are getting stronger or improve your runing time, you are graded higher, usually.
- This is something we assume, right…
BUT is this telling us something about your occupational task performance, in for.example digging, evacuation..
Can we predict your performance from these pass /fail test?

Or should we, measure your actual performance in digging / evacuation.

For.example or is our relative strain more important to know? What is this actually costing us to conduct?

Or can two persons with different strength have the opportuninty to perform at the same level in digging? - Technical aspect, work economy - more efficient working?

Image 1: pass /fail?
Image 2/3: percentage of vo2 max/ strength?
- What is more important for digging performance, strength or endurance? Anyone?

Is it feasible with the amount of soldiers that need to be tested?

Is it directly transferable to the occupational activity?

Advanced prediction models?
Monitor decline in occupational performance? Less efficiency declines over the years in service?
Should the correlation plot be presented inbetween?
Evacuation test - one strategy to meet the working demand?

“Consider implementing PES as maximal performance tests, rather than dichotomous pass/fail tests, to better understand the relationship between occupationally-relevant physical capacity and MSKI risk [Drain2019]

What Makes a Combat-Ready Soldier?

Discussion groups;

Which fitness tests do you have in your academy?

Do we have different tests between countries?

What Makes a Combat-Ready Soldier?

Discussion groups;

Why fitness is more that just passing physical training tests?

Elaborate of the idea of “test” fitness vs. “functional” fitness
- Can we predict your functional fitness?

Can you share an experience from your school days/work where the standard physical fitness test did not prepare you for or reflect the actual challenges you encountered?

How would your training look different if your goal was real-world performance instead of just test performance?

What Makes a Combat-Ready Soldier? (15 mins)

What is the association telling us?

Predicting your Field Artillery Loading Task by a maximal strength test (NATO 2019)

$R^{2}$ = 0.57
57 % of the variation in Field Artillery Loading Performance is explained by isometric pull strength

What Makes a Combat-Ready Soldier? (15 mins)

What is the association telling us?

Figure from NATO (2019)

Test fitness vs- functional fitness

Test fitness

Focus: Passing minimum standards (i.e push-ups, sit-ups, run, ball thoss)
Approach: Train for test-specific drills
Outcome: Meets assessment requirements
Limitation: Narrow scope, less adaptable
Example: 3 km timed run

Functional fitness

Focus: Real-world readiness, occupational task demands
Approach: Train movement patterns (i.e. lift, carry, crawl, sprint)
Outcome: Broad performance and injury resilience
Limitation: Slower progress on specific test scores
Example: Carrying heavy pack uphill - marching

Test fitness vs- functional fitness (15 mins)

Valid predictions?
To assess an individuals ability to cope with occupational demands

“Evaluation of the effects of physical training programs on occupational task performance, should measure relative strain, such as percentage of maximal capacity, of the participants while performing the task (functional) in addition to the performance outcome (test). These data provide more insight into an individuals ability to cope with occupational demands.”

Take aways working demands and tests

Key Takeaway:

Test fitness = meeting a standard (pass/fail based on a score).
Functional fitness = being ready for the unexpected - occupational demand.
- Military pentathlon exercises, could some of these exercises be implemented in a test battery to test occupational demands?
Best approach: Train to exceed test standards while building functional fitness (specificity), and resilience for real-world battlefield performance.

Possible solution/suggestion:

Make your own test batteries for relevant occupational task?
- Then you, at least, can monitor and control your progression in relevant occupational tasks that you will meet on the battlefield.
- Control of training progression?
- Feasible?
- Motivational?

Session 3: From Mission Readiness to the Military Pentathlon

Group task:

Explain how each one aligns with real-life soldiering skills
- Transferable to your field of speciality?
- In which situations can you meet these skills in your field of speciality?

(speed, coordination, endurance, decision-making, concentration, agility, aerob, strength, muscle endurance

Session 3: From Mission Readiness to the Military Pentathlon

Cadets individual task:

Which event would challenge you most and why?

Group task:

Design a weekly PT session that includes at least one combat skill and one pentathlon-inspired drill

Wrap-Up & Cadet Takeaways

Training with purpose

Key points:
Importance of physical fitness
Working demands
Can we predict your occupational task performance?
Military pentathlon - a way of training on working demands

References

Billing, Dan C., and Jace R. Drain. 2017. “International Congress on Soldiers’ Physical Performance 2017: Research Priorities Across the Service Members Operational Lifecycle.” Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport 20 (November): S1–3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2017.10.025.

Drain, Jace R., and Tara J. Reilly. 2019. “Physical Employment Standards, Physical Training and Musculoskeletal Injury in Physically Demanding Occupations.” Edited by Gemma S. Milligan, Sam D. Blacker, Pieter E. H. Brown, and Andrew G. Siddall. Work 63 (4): 495–508. https://doi.org/10.3233/wor-192963.

Hauschild, V. D., D. W. DeGroot, S. M. Hall, T. L. Grier, K. D. Deaver, K. G. Hauret, and B. H. Jones. 2017. “Fitness Tests and Occupational Tasks of Military Interest: A Systematic Review of Correlations.” Journal Article. Occup Environ Med 74 (2): 144–53. https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2016-103684.

Hendrickson, N. R., M. A. Sharp, J. A. Alemany, L. A. Walker, E. A. Harman, B. A. Spiering, D. L. Hatfield, et al. 2010. “Combined Resistance and Endurance Training Improves Physical Capacity and Performance on Tactical Occupational Tasks.” Journal Article. Eur J Appl Physiol 109 (6): 1197–1208. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-010-1462-2.

Mala, J., T. K. Szivak, S. D. Flanagan, B. A. Comstock, J. Z. Laferrier, C. M. Maresh, and W. J. Kraemer. 2015. “The Role of Strength and Power During Performance of High Intensity Military Tasks Under Heavy Load Carriage.” Journal Article. US Army Med Dep J, 3–11.

NATO, Report. 2019. “Biological Limitations to Task Performance and Trainability.” Report. https://publications.sto.nato.int/publications/STO%20Technical%20Reports/STO-TR-HFM-269/$$TR-HFM-269-ALL.pdf.

Ojanen, T., H. Kyröläinen, M. Igendia, and K. Häkkinen. 2018. “Effect of Prolonged Military Field Training on Neuromuscular and Hormonal Responses and Shooting Performance in Warfighters.” Journal Article. Mil Med 183 (11-12): e705–12. https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usy122.